Electronic distribution of information has gained importance with the proliferation of personal computers and wide area networks such as the Internet. With the widespread use of the Internet, it has become possible to distribute large, coherent units of information, such as books, using electronic technologies. Books distributed using electronic technologies are commonly referred to as electronic books (“eBooks”). Various entities make eBooks available for download over ordinary Internet connections, such as broadband and dialup connections.
Typically, digital works are structured as virtual frames presented on a display device, and a user may turn or change from one virtual frame or “page” of electronic content to another. The term “page” as used herein refers to a collection of content that is presented at one time on a display. Thus, “pages” as described herein are not fixed permanently, and may be redefined or repaginated based on variances in display conditions, such as screen size, font type or size, margins, line spacing, resolution, or the like.
EBooks may be displayed and read on a variety of different display devices, such as computer monitors, portable digital assistants (PDAs), pocket personal computers (PCs), and specialized eBook reader devices, for example. The screen size of the various display options may vary greatly from one display device to another. For example, a computer monitor may have a screen size of twenty-one inches (measured diagonally) or more, while a pocket PC may have a screen size as small as a few inches. Simply by virtue of the larger screen size, more content can be displayed on the computer monitor at one time than on the pocket PC. Thus, content that appears on a certain page (e.g., page 10) of an eBook when displayed on a computer monitor may appear on a much later page (i.e., page 50) when displayed on a pocket PC or some other display device having a smaller screen size.
Font type also affects how much textual content can displayed on a display screen. Different fonts may have a different number of characters per inch and may have uniform or variable character widths. Perhaps more significantly, the size of the font also affects the amount of content displayed on a display screen. Generally, the smaller the font size, the more text that will fit on the display screen, and vice versa.
These and other display conditions (e.g., screen resolution, margins, line spacing, etc.) affect the amount of content that can be displayed on a given display screen. Accordingly, it may be difficult or impossible for a user reading an eBook on one display device to meaningfully communicate a page cite to a reader of the same eBook on another display device, because one or more of the foregoing display conditions may be different. For example, when a reader cites a meaningful quotation on page 27, line 3, this citation is likely to not be accurate for most other readers.
Another problem may arise when a user is in the middle of reading an eBook and decides to change the font type, font size, margins, or some other display condition. In that case, the user probably knows what page he or she was reading prior to the change in display condition. However, after the change, the content the user was previously reading will likely be found on a different page of the eBook, and the user may not be able to easily locate the place where he or she left off.
Thus, there remains a need to improve a method of identifying or referencing material within electronic content to improve a reader's ability to navigate within an eBook and to better identify a location within the eBook content.